AOC Suggests Raising Top Marginal Tax Rate

From the Left

The left is excited to be discussing policy ideas, and argues that a higher tax rate for top earners is backed by historical precedent and economic research.

From the Right

The right opposes the plan, arguing that it would harm the economy while failing to earn nearly as much revenue as projected.

“Politics nerds talk about something called the Overton Window, it's the theory that only a limited number of policy ideas can be discussed at a time. It's a spectrum, and only that which fits within the spectrum can make it into the national conversation. It seems that Ocasio-Cortez is getting her ideas on the spectrum…

"We live in a country where 63% of citizens think that our economy is stilted unfairly toward the rich and special interest groups… As more and more Americans feel the deck is stacked against them, they're going to start listening to these ideas.”Business Insider

“I mean, who thinks [this] makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance… And it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history… AOC, far from showing her craziness, is fully in line with serious economic research.”New York Times

“The top rate was 91% from 1946 to 1963 (the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy years), applied to incomes of $400,000 or more. That income in 1956 would be the equivalent of $3.8 million today. Somehow the rich kept working, and the republic did not fall. Indeed, those years included periods of unexampled prosperity and the growth of a strong middle class in the United States.”Los Angeles Times

“The more intelligent criticism of Ocasio-Cortez is a pragmatic one. The National Review argument is that high tax rates simply can’t raise the kinds of revenue that would be necessary to fund a ‘Green New Deal’. This is, in part, because the rich would circumvent the tax through loopholes and moving money overseas. But this, in itself, is not an argument for not levying the tax: it’s an argument for closing loopholes and finding ways to effectively restrict the international movement of capital.”The Guardian

“One can raise a variety of technocratic quibbles with Ocasio-Cortez’s plan (raising taxes on capital gains might be a more effective way of soaking the super-rich; a confiscatory top marginal rate might prove impotent absent a global war on tax havens). But it would not be extreme in its redistributive implications, relative to our country’s past tax practices, or to other nations’ current ones… Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent top tax rate is a moderate, evidence-based policy.”New York Magazine

From the Right

The right opposes the plan, arguing that it would harm the economy while failing to earn nearly as much revenue as projected.

“The rich in the U.S… already pay an outsized portion of income taxes compared to their earnings. In 2016, the top 1 percent of income earners—those who earned about $500,000—earned 20 percent of all U.S. income while paying 37 percent of all federal income taxes. The top 10 percent earned 46 percent of all income and paid almost 70 percent of all federal income taxes…

“[Moreover] there’s a reason both Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses have seen fit to cut taxes repeatedly… In the 1920s, tax rates were cut from 71 percent to 24 percent, and the economy grew by a massive 59 percent… President John F. Kennedy lowered the top rate in the 1960s, and President Ronald Reagan lowered it again in the 1980s. Both of these tax cuts were followed by two of the longest economic expansions in our history.”Heritage Foundation

Furthermore, “in reality, very little money would be raised by the proposal… Save for a few actors and professional athletes, the bulk of income at this level is from capital gains or business income… Without a complete overhaul to the taxation of capital gains, wealthy investors would move to limit their capital gains realizations to avoid this absurdly high rate…the only beneficiaries [would be] high-priced accountants and attorneys.”Washington Examiner

“If it were really possible to fatten government spending annually by as much as $650 billion (to use 2016 tax data) without killing the golden goose, we have to believe U.S. politicians would be doing so already… all evidence suggests that the richest taxpayers are the most diligent about mobilizing lobbyists and politicians to finagle the tax code on their behalf… The net result isn’t more revenue. It’s more efficiency-inhibiting economic distortions.”Wall Street Journal

When rates were higher, “tax exclusions and high income thresholds shielded nearly everyone from these tax rates — to the degree that the richest 1 percent of earners paid lower effective income-tax rates in the [1960s] than today. In 1960, only eight taxpayers paid the 91 percent rate. Overall, today’s 8.2 percent of GDP in federal income-tax revenues exceeds that of the 1950s (7.2 percent), 1960s (7.6 percent), and 1970s (7.9 percent). Those earlier decades were not a tax-the-rich utopia…

“Not a single country in the OECD has a 70 percent tax bracket. Indeed, America’s top combined income- and payroll-tax rate already exceeds that of England, Germany, and Norway, and is only 7 points below that of France. Europe finances its generous welfare states through steep value-added taxes that hit the entire population.”National Review

“Democratic aspirants point excitedly at the health-care systems and family-leave policies of Britain or Canada, while promising not to raise taxes on anyone making $250,000 or less per year. This is an impossible, unsustainable combination.”National Review